On a spring day 153 years ago, a wagon drove John Stoefel to a cottonwood tree near Cherry Creek. Two days earlier, Stoefel had killed his brother-in-law. In a few minutes, about 1,000 people would watch him hanged, the first person in Colorado killed by legally ordered execution.

In the years since Stoefel’s execution, Colorado has put to death 102 others, according to figures compiled by the University of Colorado’s Michael Radelet, who has written the definitive history on the use of the death penalty in Colorado. Most of those executions came in the state’s earlier years — interesting fact: Stoefel was buried in Cheesman Park, when that space was a cemetery — and Colorado has put to death only one killer in the past 45 years.

Dunlap is currently one of three inmates on death row. That number could grow in the near future if Edward Montour, a convicted murderer who then killed a corrections officer, is resentenced to death in a hearing that could commence this year. Montour had previously been on death row but had his sentence overturned because it was delivered by a judge following Montour’s guilty plea to murder. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that death sentences must be decided by a jury.